Weird problem with old desktop computer

[flipper35]

You can jumper two pins on the PS connector to the MB to rule out the button.

[Scott Douglas]

Again, how long has it been since you replaced the system battery? You know, the one on the motherboard that keeps all the info alive in the memory of the system.

My wife has an old computer that I have to keep alive for her sewing programs that don't work on Win 10 and up. When hers started to not respond like yours is doing I replaced the battery and it fixed it.

[Por_sha911]

Thanks again for all the ideas.

Its the factory battery but the date and time aren't lost when it is shut down.

I hesitate to check the Power Supply or the battery since that isn't the problem I may not be able to restart. Will check both of those if the machine is shut down again (like a power outage that is longer than the UPS can maintain power).

[Por_sha911]

Odd coincidence: today the wife's Win 7 desktop opened with a Bios page and the clock said December 2003. *A no-brainer that is needed a new battery on the motherboard*
One 2032 battery later (and having to reinstall antivirus that got weird) we're back up and running.

Since the Vista machine is holding date and time when it was shut down for 10 hours I tend to think the battery is not the issue...

[flipper35]

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

Thanks again for all the ideas.

Its the factory battery but the date and time aren't lost when it is shut down.

I hesitate to check the Power Supply or the battery since that isn't the problem I may not be able to restart. Will check both of those if the machine is shut down again (like a power outage that is longer than the UPS can maintain power).

You don't have to remove anything to test the power supply with the jumpers, should it shut down again. Just jumper in place.

[Por_sha911]

Originally Posted by flipper35

You don't have to remove anything to test the power supply with the jumpers, should it shut down again. Just jumper in place.

So with desktop off but with power going to the power supply, just jumper those two pins? Does the cable end need to be disconnected from the mother board?

Sorry about all the questions.

[Por_sha911]

??

[Por_sha911]

Well, I've a dead computer again. I never did get the answer to the question:
To jumper the PS:

Does the cable end need to be disconnected from the mother board?

[stevej37]

I didn't read all the comments...but on my laptop, I need to hold the power button down for at least 3 seconds or it won't power on.

[Por_sha911]

*** While waiting for answer saw this:
the power to the power supply was on but the power light on the back was out - I unplugged the power cable going into the PS and when I plugged it back in the light came on BUT when I pushed the power button in the front, the light went out!

If I hold the button for 3 secs the light in the back at the PS comes on. Hold it again it goes out and then light comes back on but the computer doesn't fire (and the power button in the front doesn't light up either time)

I really need stuff off this machine. HELP!

[Zeke]

Singing the old why didn't I back up blues.

[Por_sha911]

I've got everything backed up.
I have software on the old machine that won't work in Win 11

[Scott Douglas]

Did you ever replace the system battery?

I know it still holds the date/time but....You never know.

[Por_sha911]

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

Did you ever replace the system battery?

I know it still holds the date/time but....You never know.

No but I've had a sys battery go bad and it still goes to the bios and says I need to set the day. This situation its like the bios isn't kicking in???

[spuggy]

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

Thanks for the input!

This a VERY OLD machine - Running Vista. I am trying to keep it going because there is software on there I can't run in newer machines. I don't use it for anything that would involve finances, credit cards, personal data...

Obviously, there are no updates available and I kept it up to date until MS a Dell (there is a special place in Hades for Dell customer service) stopped. I hesitate to reinstall all software for the concern if something goes bad along the way I am out in the cold.

I have no idea if the machine has an ATX motherboard but if someone can tell me where to look I'll check with software or hardware.

You should be aware that there was a range of Dell desktop consumer machines around that time that looked like they had ATX power supplies - even had an ATX-style plug that wasn't keyed or blocked out any differently to a "real" ATX plug - but the motherboards were wired differently, as were the power supplies to match. As in putting power lines carrying significant amperage on totally different pins to the PC standard, as I recall. Yes, some of us went "Hold up, wut?" at the time.

Replacing a Dell PSU that went pop with an industry-standard ATX PSU would fry the mobo irreparably. Number of people got burned by that, and they were NOT happy campers - Dell got a lot of user feedback (cough: read "strongly criticized") and stopped doing it. But it's not like they recalled them - they are still out there. And you may have one. Seem to recall that was an Optiplex model, maybe others. Dell consumer-grade stuff at the time was a totally different line to their higher-end gear.

I wouldn't rely on my 20-year old recollection of a Dell foible on a machine I never owned - should probably do some research to be VERY VERY sure exactly what you have/are doing before you start sticking paperclips in the ATX power connector. Just sayin'.


I have no idea what software you have that won't run on anything later. I was a reluctant 'Doze user at the time - avoided Vista entirely, and skipped my wife's machine from XP to Win7 - only thing I saw that stopped working was that Microsoft dropped driver support for my trusty Artec 9600dpi SCSI flatbed scanner (Linux had perfectly functional drivers for it and still does to this day). Oh, and there was a bunch of cheap no-name USB-serial dongles that never got functional drivers for Vista either. Think they changed the driver architecture, so the XP drivers didn't work anymore and they never re-wrote them. I sense that you're probably not jacking into router/swtich/server console ports or frobbing diagnostic interfaces on automotive ECUs, so that's probably not an issue.

If your software really can't be convinced to run on anything more recent (again, somewhat skeptical), then I personally would be very inclined to create a VM image from it and run it on your laptop instead. Because any laptop sold in the last 5 years is likely at least 5x more powerful than a desktop PC from 2007.

VMware have a free vCenter converter standalone utility to perform a bare-metal backup/generate a VM image directly from the running machine. Or there are multiple other ways to do it with varying amounts of intermediate steps. But pretty much everything that can be considered a hypervisor either knows what to do with a VMware disk image, or can convert it to its own native format.

With the VMware utility, simply plug in an external hard drive, stop any active services that scribble to disk (like databases etc), run up the utility and write the virtual disk image to the external. Take that to your laptop and import it into VMware Workstation, Virtualbox, Hyper-V, Parallels, KVM/QEMU or whatever suits your OS and other use case preferences. Boot the VM, install any additional drivers it wants for the emulated hardware, job done.

I'd probably be tempted to also create a VM with a clean OS install and install only the software you needed into it. And then also try upgrading it to something less reviled than Vista. But that's up to you.

Good luck.

[Por_sha911]

TY - very informative. My XP PS crapped out 10+ years ago and I replaced it with one from New Egg. Never had a problem. The pin thing did concern me since the plug into the motherboard has more pin than what the above pic show.

The more I look into it, the more I believe something when wonky with the bios. I am not skilled with doing things suggested. I have a PIII that ran ME in the closet. If I can get it to fire up I may just go stone age and use it for the couple programs that I can't get to work with Win11 (I get an error message that missing components - maybe a driver or a DLL) and when I tried to install on program the laptop wouldn't run so I has to use SecureKey to get it back and then use a restore point (whew).

I guess I can't say I didn't see this coming. I've backed up (zero data was lost )and prepared as much as I could for the eventuality of having to give up XP. I wish I could buy a NOS XP or Win 7 machine.

[john70t]

There are performance tests like UserBenchmark and PassMark.
Maybe try monitoring software https://windowsreport.com/hardware-diagnostic-tools-windows-10/ to see if RAM or PSU is dropping out.

A cleanup and defrag (use only on platter drives) might speed things up in general.
Looks like Vista supports system file checking: https://neosmart.net/wiki/sfc/ to find OS errors.

It could be as simple as a loose connector if the case has been opened up. Be gentle. One at a time.

[spuggy]

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

TY - very informative. My XP PS crapped out 10+ years ago and I replaced it with one from New Egg. Never had a problem. The pin thing did concern me since the plug into the motherboard has more pin than what the above pic show.

The more I look into it, the more I believe something when wonky with the bios. I am not skilled with doing things suggested. I have a PIII that ran ME in the closet. If I can get it to fire up I may just go stone age and use it for the couple programs that I can't get to work with Win11 (I get an error message that missing components - maybe a driver or a DLL) and when I tried to install on program the laptop wouldn't run so I has to use SecureKey to get it back and then use a restore point (whew).

I guess I can't say I didn't see this coming. I've backed up (zero data was lost )and prepared as much as I could for the eventuality of having to give up XP. I wish I could buy a NOS XP or Win 7 machine.

Y'know, you've carefully avoided mentioning even what model of Dell this is.

And you describe the front button/LED behavior,

[

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

]the power to the power supply was on but the power light on the back was out - I unplugged the power cable going into the PS and when I plugged it back in the light came on BUT when I pushed the power button in the front, the light went out!

If I hold the button for 3 secs the light in the back at the PS comes on. Hold it again it goes out and then light comes back on but the computer doesn't fire (and the power button in the front doesn't light up either time)

This behavior(light on thr back going out when you press the front button) seems to be part of Dell's BIST - try googling "dell hold the button for 3 secs the light in the back at the PS comes on" and read the explanation there.

A quick skim through that (an AI slop summary, probably mixed up from a dozen models) makes me think that could indicate the motherboard may not be working correctly. And you're not going to get far without that.

Good news is that a replacement motherboard for a machine that old will probably run you more for postage than the part itself on Flea Bay.

Bad news is that swapping parts randomly without any idea what's wrong is just as poor an approach for computers as it is for cars....

You should probably first:

a) Read the diagnostics in Dell's manual for that specific model. Some have diagnostic LEDs on the motherboard, and blink-codes for error states that may indicate what's wrong.
b) Go through the time-honored "reseat everything", "remove everything you can", "rotate DIMM positions/remove all unnecessary sticks" etc dance to see if you can get it booting to BIOS beofre adding stuff back to see what kills it.

Seems unlikely to me that the BIOS is at fault. They're held in non-volatile storage and don't evaporate. Even if you lose the transient settings in CMOS because the battery (usually a CR20xx, like a 2032 or 2035) that keeps those alive (and also drives the RTC when the computer is switched off), the BIOS will just (typically) revert to default settings and prompt you to set the date/time on every boot.

As the machine isn't booting - or even giving you boot error beep codes - seems to me that you're not even getting as far as the BIOS being involved.